review

I don't know if this is national, so I thought I'd post it up.

Dairy Queen has a commercial where a young couple is daydreaming over some ice cream. The man dreams the soon-to-come baby is a boy and the woman dreams that *she* is holding the video camera and coaching the birth while the man suffers labor and yells into the camera "You did this to me!"

heh.

Kim Ponders on Blogher writes a compelling post Fear Up Harsh where she begins,

Last week’s New Yorker highlighted the 2 ½ year efforts of Alberto J. Mora, the Navy’s former general counsel, to avoid interrogation techniques like “fear up harsh�—increasing the prisoner’s fear level to such extreme that he feels compelled to confess—that violate the Geneva Conventions.

This goes to the highest levels in the government,

That was the point Mora made when he went public in the New Yorker with a 22-page memo documenting his long, unsuccessful struggle to keep Bush administration officials not only within the law, but also within the our long-standing tradition of fair and humane war practice.

The blog, the New Yorker Article, and the 22-page memo are truly worth a careful reading.

Author Ponders, concludes,

Our alarming disregard of the Geneva Conventions after the 9/11 attacks is, to me, the worst crime we have committed against ourselves as a free and open democracy since the days of Japanese internment during WWII. In allowing ourselves to commit torture on war criminals, we have negated the very values we stand for.

Forrest Church in his book the "Seven Deadly Virtues" reminds us that we must pick our enemies carefully, for in the end, we will become like them.

This latest revelation reminds us just how far down that road the United States has gone.

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

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Warning: game spoilers.

Beyond Good & Evil is one of the few games that features a hero who just happens to be female. Whilst the feminism is cloaked, it can be argued that this game is much more subversive than it appears.

Overview

Beyond Good & Evil is an action-adventure game available on a wide array of platforms. Despite good reviews, it did not sell as well as expected.

Beyond Good & Evil has an emphasis on plot, but not at the expense of action, with plenty of fighting and scouting around the otherworld landscape. The setting is a peaceful mining planet called Hillys. There are plenty of puzzles and obstacles, and the game rewards stealth, patience, curiosity, and perserverance. You can can access maps, which help you navigate the Hillys world and find hidden areas, and you are able to buy and carry items and food. While the game is driven by a narrative, there's plenty of time to explore the world and pursue auxiliary quests.

Stylistically, the game is well-crafted. There are beautiful landscapes and vistas, although not all the environments are pleasant: there are some dark and creepy settings as well, particularly as the game progresses. Jade and other characteres are well-rendered, and the musical score is used to great effect, in terms of creating a fantasy world and heightening the drama.

The most unique aspect in Beyond Good and Evil is that it features a main character who just happens to be female.

Meet Jade

The hero and main character—the character that you closely identify with and the only character you're able to control from beginning to end—is Jade, a young woman who lives in a lighthouse orphanage.

The narrative is constructed from Jade's point of view, and generally we learn new information when she does (although the game leaves clues that the savvy player can pick up on). Jade's parents are deceased, and she has only her Uncle Pey'j as family. However, while other characters are important, they are subordinate to the character of Jade.

This is quite a switch for action/adventure games, where central characters are usually male.

You're not The Woman, but a woman

Jade isn't surrounded by male characters, either. The Governor of Hillys is a woman (what's more, a black woman), as is the Museum Director, who pays Jade for the photographs she takes of new life forms. At least one character of a underground rebel cell is female (a cat woman) as well.

Although the proportion of female to male characters is still weighted towards the male, female characters are placed in positions of status and power and, more importantly, risk.

Tension between traditional and modern narratives

Some elements of the narrative provide tension between a more traditional female role and a more modern, feminist understanding of Jade.

Firstly, she's given permission to rebel, sleuth, break rules, and explore through a traditional "protector mother" narrative. She's doing this all for the children - that is, the orphans at the lighthouse.

This is a non-threatening role for a female character, as it gives her special license to act up and act out, in a way that women usually aren't allowed. Think Sigorney Weaver's maternal motive in "Alien 2", or, more recently, Jodie Foster's character in Flightplan. Audiences are more comfortable seeing women as acting upon the world when their motivation is child-based.

And yet Jade-as-protector turns out to be a pretense that is dropped fairly quickly. Sporadically, she thinks of the orphans, but this motivation is on-parr with her need to know the truth. While the game appears to cater to conservative views of gender roles, it is actually some pretty thin wallpaper. The real puzzle, for Jade and the player, is:

Under whose control is she living?

This is the core of the game.

No Love Lost

Additionally, Beyond Good and Evil is equally notable for what it leaves out: the "love narrative." Jade's quest is not to be subsumed by a love interest, nor is she to be the object of someone's desire. Those stories usually imply that the most interesting thing about a female character is how men regard her, and what happens in her personal life; but Jade's story is larger than that, extending to governments, underground political groups, and military forces.

This is a significant departure, given that in the gaming world the female character is usually assigned a stock love narrative, and that is all that is done to develop her character. It is significant, then, that Jade is first and foremost a person, who is solving a problem that is larger and more complex than her personal world.

What does she look like?

The physical form of Jade is conducive to a woman-as-person-not-sex-object reading. Bear in mind, the gaming world brought us Lara Croft, which was wildly popular. In comparison to Croft, Jade is more human and less feminized. While she wears some sort of lipstick, it is green , not red or pink, and this slightly undermines the erotic meaning attached to lipstick. Her anatomy is matter-of-factly female: the breasts are just there - a part of her like every other part. She wears military green combat trousers and a lightweight t-shirt with a green jacket. The clothing appears comfortable and functional. Her headband, too, emphasizes practicality rather than a concern with looks.

All in all, judging by how Jade dresses, I would venture that Jade regards her body as a tool, and as long as that tool functions properly, it serves her well and she is happy with it.

And her body is very important for the progress of the game.

Beyond the Physical: Jade the Framer

The opening of the game establishes (in a comical way) Jade's poor economic status. In fact, Jade belongs to several lower-status groups, assuming that Hillys does not differ too much from modern first-world countries:

1. She is a woman (assuming Hillys is patriarchal).
2. She is young (the website states 20; playing the game, I guessed 18 or so).
3. She is poor.

Because Hillys operates under a capitalist system (and the market stalls and businesses in and around the Pedesterian District all suggest it is), Jade bears the stigma (and implied ineffectual position) of poverty.

Not that the game makes much of it; there's no self-pitying on Jade's part, and a chipper, determined can-do attitude about her. It all serves to emphasize the power imbalance between her and the powers that control Hillys. Those powers are militaristic and governmental, but there is a great degree of slippage between the two. Jade battling Domz alien.

Jade's use of the camera (obstensibly to earn money, later to effect political change) is obviously signficant. She is the framer of this tale. Either somebody's been reading Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (see opening chapters) or I'm reading too much into this. But the camera does position Jade as the looker - and not the "looked-at".

Conlusion

While the writers and developers of this game adhered to some traditional gender roles, for the most part these elements are underplayed. Instead, Jade's agency is emphasized. This positions Beyond Good & Evil as a subtley—and not so subtley—feminist game. The feminism is through the back door.

Related links:

• Beyond Good & Evil Official Website
• Girls & Game Ads series, Part 1 & Part 2, by Andrea Rubenstein, Official Shrub.com blog

Note: I meant to incorporate Nietzshe but never got around to it. Incidentally, both entries at Wikipedia for Beyond Good and Evil and Friedrich Nietzche need polishing up and expansion. If you're knowledgeable in these areas, please consider contributing.

People ask, "does life begin at conception?" Is the this a religious question? Scientific? Moral one? One of property rights? Who decides and to what end? Is governmental regulation needed? Required?

Governments pass laws about human reproduction. They have done so for years - perhaps since the beginning of history. We look around our own back yard, so to speak. Today, in many states, it is illegal for first cousins to have children. In the case of "Baby-M," a few years back, a court ruled that biological parents have higher standing than did the parents the child bonded with during the first several years of life. Going back a bit, it was illegal in some states for people of different races to marry. There were laws during slavery as to who "owned" a child born to a woman who in turn was owned by a slave master.

Government's role in human reproduction is well established, although it has shifted with time and technology. In the blatant example of slavery, when slavery was outlawed, a shift in perception took place as well, but not entirely and the laws around miscegenation suggests that latent racist attitudes still held sway.

Popular morality is often not in step with science. Notions about the world can threaten man's views. Galileo Galilee's views did not square with the church. Some time would pass before his theories were accepted. Fundamentalists still fight against the teaching of evolution, although phylobiology seems to have settled the matter in favor of Darwin.

The human genome project has given people a lot to ponder. The means of human reproduction have shifted. In the last century a great deal of effort was expended in preventing pregnancies. There was also the beginnings toward the end of the century in inducing pregnancy. As Harvard Professor, Deborah Spar, quipped: through science we can have sex without pregnancy. Now we can have pregnancy without sex.

In this century human cloning is possible. Legislatures in many parts of the world pass laws against it. There are also places where stem cell research is banned. There are places where fetal remnants are governed or banned. One example where the line is straddled is the human placenta, loaded with stem cells and other goodies, that many an affluent parent(s) "blood bank" for the infant. If a sibling suffering from a fetal disease needs biological material from a sibling, is that something the government needs to become involved in, or even to ban?

There is/was a law on the books in Massachusetts that a medical procedure cannot be performed on a child that would leave the child less well off. However, in one case, a child needed a kidney and the sibling was an ideal match for a kidney transplant. The Court found that the donor child would be less well off if she did not donate the kidney, in that her sister would die without it, and the surviving sister would have to deal with the sorrow and possibly guilt of that death.

In the abstract, rules about conception, and when life begins, seem simple enough to make, but as we get closer to the reality, deciding what is right takes on proportions of the Wisdom of Solomon.

There is a disease called Franconi Anemia that strikes children. It is nearly always fatal. The child can often be saved if a healthy blood donor that is a match can be found and medical steps taken. Often the best donor is a sibling. What parents have done in such cases is to have as many children in succession as possible, racing against the clock to save the afflicted child - hoping a child is born that is a tissue match. What if science can intervene during the early stages and figure out which zygote (sperm-egg joining) has the best chance of producing a child that is a good match and tissue donor? What should public policy be?

There may be impregnated eggs that will not produce a child that is a good tissue match. What should the fate be of these eggs? Should government step forward? One popular view is that since not all the eggs will be brought to term, none should be. It is not realistic to think that all the eggs will be implanted into infertile women. Thus, the parent(s) have to "roll the dice," so to speak and take their chances Yet in all this, we ask, is the public good served by this?

Some will argue that it is a slippery slope from saving a precious baby to eugenics. Today we save a child - tomorrow we make monsters. A compelling argument given the horrors we saw in the last century, yet science and popular understanding are not in sync, here. It is now possible to check our own genetic predisposition to diseases. The human genome projects rolls on as the science of bioinformatics makes genetic determinations ever easier. A predisposition for diseases is now part of medical testing. Certain medications will work better with certain diseases. For example, if a person has a wasting disease, and there are three possible medicines, which one do we give, especially if it turns out that in certain individuals only one works while the other two do not? If time is of the essence, would it not be good to find out which of the three should be used first? This is not science fiction. This is happening today.

Pharmaceutical firms are cutting down the time and cost of developing new drugs because the drugs can be better tailored to the job. Fewer people (although some) would be against this kind of medical research. But take that a step further. Since genetic predispositions can be now determined, will we now bring our genetic profiles out when we get ready to mate?

If sperm and egg can be looked at individually in some future laboratory, will we have satisfied "morality" by not joining sperm and egg until these have been properly selected under a "microscope" and then intermingled at the right moment?

Whether or not Roe should be overturned hardly gets us anywhere. Human reproduction will undergo startling changes that cannot be fully contained. Certainly these things can be kept away from the poor and underclass, but those with wealth and power will find the means.

We are afraid of creating monsters, but if a child's parent does nothing if a child needs help - who then is the monster.

Where is Salomon when you need him?